Video: Inside Line Drives the Fast Five ’63 “Grand Sport”

Regardless of how you feel about the Fast and Furious movies, you’ve got to admit that a ’63 Grand Sport Vette tearing it up on the silver screen is pretty stinkin’ cool. In the latest installment of the series, Fast Five, a modern interpretation of the legendary Chevy does just that – and thanks to Edmunds Inside Line we have all the dirt on the latest automotive movie star.

You should be relieved to find out that all the roadsters used for the movie are actually impostors, and no real Grand Sports were harmed during the filming. (Even the producers of F&F have more sense than to purposely destroy priceless pieces of racing history!)

The Grand Sport Corvettes you see flying off that cliff in the movie is essentially a kit car produced by Mongoose Motorsports out of Ravenna, Ohio. Each car has a fiberglass body that rides on a custom steel-tube frame sporting C4 suspension components, and 17-inch replicas of the original Grand Sport wheels. Under the iconic Grand Sport hood lives a big-block 502, that likes to take out its aggression on a Super T-10 four-speed.

The crew of Fast Five reportedly put together 10 Mongoose Grand Sports with a variety of equipment for specific uses in the movie. One car was even equipped with a VW off-road chassis to take those epic jumps and shock destroying bumps that a real Vette never could. Its no surprise that most of the cars were unceremoniously destroyed in the process of filming the high-flying antics of Vin and Paul. But hey – what’s a few kit cars in the name of entertainment?